In January 1993, the automotive world focused on the Detroit Auto Show, one of the auto world's premiere events where car makers unveil their newest models and latest technologies.

But it wasn't that year's expected top-selling vehicles that captured the spotlight. It was a news conference by Mercedes-Benz.

The German luxury automaker announced it would build its first auto plant in America and would conduct a nationwide search for a site where it would make an initial investment of $300 million to $350 million.

The announcement got everyone's attention — the year's biggest economic development project was up for grabs.

“Initially we screened proposals from almost all 50 states,” said Linda (Paulmeno) Sewell, who in 1993 was the director of communications for Mercedes' site selection team.

Working with site selection consulting company Fluor Daniels, the team winnowed down the list to 20 states, then 12 and finally six.

“I still remember the final six we were looking at — Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Nebraska,” said Sewell, now vice president of external affairs for Energen Corp. in Birmingham.

Mercedes' announcement of plans to build a U.S. plant came just months after its German luxury-car rival, BMW, announced plans to build its first American auto plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

BMW's announcement, however, was different. It picked the site for its plant and then announced its decision, said Dara Longgrear, executive director of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority, which recruits new industry. There was no advance fanfare, no advance notice, he said.

Mercedes, on the other hand, got everyone's attention by offering the year's biggest economic development project as the prize.

Unlikely contender

Nationally, there were some early front-runners for the site. Alabama was not among them.

In fact, Alabama seemed an unlikely candidate at the start of 1993 because the state was in turmoil. Republican Gov. Guy Hunt was under indictment for converting some of his inaugural funds to personal use. In April, a jury found him guilty, and he was removed from office.

Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr., a Democrat, became governor and quickly installed his own Cabinet.

“I asked Billy Joe (Camp) to become director of the Alabama Development Office,” Folsom recalled last week. Camp, a longtime aide and confidant of former Gov. George Wallace, resigned from his elective post as secretary of state to join Folsom's team.

Camp, who is now semi-retired but still does some economic development consulting, said last week that by the time he joined the Folsom administration, Mercedes already had set up an office in Chicago for its site selection team and had hired the company Fluor Daniels to handle the initial site selection screening.

Shortly after taking office, Folsom invited Elmer Harris, then president of Alabama Power Co. and a major voice for recruiting new industry to the state, to meet with him and Camp in Montgomery.

“When I got there, the first thing the governor said to me was, 'Do you think we should go after the Mercedes-Benz project?' ” Harris recalled. “I said: 'Yes, but the first thing you have to realize is that we are not even on their potential site list. To get on it, we have to organize and be able to make decisions on the spot.' ”

There wasn't enough time to call the governor for every little decision, Harris said.

Folsom agreed and delegated Camp to be the state's point man, who would keep him advised of developments.

“It really was quite an exciting time,” Folsom recalled.

Alabama now needed to get Mercedes' attention quickly.

One thing it had going for it was that it had made a pitch a few years earlier to get the new Saturn auto plant that ultimately went to Spring Hill, Tenn. The state had shown the Saturn team a site between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa along Interstate 20/59 near Vance. That nearly 1,000-acre site's plan had to be updated for Mercedes. A small group of Tuscaloosa County leadership was brought into the project.

“It was clear the consultant from Fluor Daniels would help find the site,” recalled Longgrear, the long-time executive director of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Authority. That's the person he had to reach, he said.

Championship season

Two things were known about the consultant, Bill Dorsey — he was going to be attending a business-development convention in Atlanta, where Alabama industrial recruiters planned to host some events, and he liked college football.

Tuscaloosa County had a trump card — UA football coach Gene Stallings' Crimson Tide was the reigning national champion college football team.

“We asked Coach Stallings to be our guest at the Atlanta convention,” Longgrear said. “The goal was to have him lure Bill Dorsey to our (hospitality) suite.”

Dorsey came to meet Stallings and the state's industrial recruiters got to meet him.

Camp recalled that the word on the street then was Mercedes already had settled on a site in North Carolina.

“I remembered I asked Dorsey if it was a done deal for North Carolina,” Camp said. “Dorsey said, 'North Carolina is a good place to do business, but it is not a done deal. If Alabama is interested, we would like to receive your proposal.' ”

That got the ball rolling. Information was supplied to Dorsey and the Mercedes site selection team; each request for more information about such things as taxes, roads, infrastructure and education systems was quickly answered as more people were added to the state's recruiting effort to make sure deadlines for getting the information was met.

Harris meanwhile asked Anthony Topazi, then head of Alabama Power's Western Division based in Tuscaloosa and chairman of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority, to work full-time on Project Rosewood, a code name for the Mercedes project, which got its name from the rosewood paneling used in the interiors of Mercedes cars.

“I told Anthony if he got Mercedes, he would have a good, long future with the company,” Harris recalled.

Topazi later became president and CEO of Mississippi Power, a sister company of Alabama Power, and later retired as chief operating officer of Southern Company, the parent company of the two utilities.

Visiting Alabama

During the recruiting process, the Alabama recruiters learned the Mercedes site selection team might be able to view the Vance site.

Harris arranged for Alabama Power's corporate jet to fly to Nebraska to pick up Andreas Renschler, who was heading the search team.

“We have a corporate policy of no smoking on our planes,” recalled the now retired Harris. “But I know a little bit about the German culture, and I knew many Germans like to smoke.”

He said he called the jet's pilots aside, told them to buy some ashtrays and put them in the cabin. “I then told them, 'When we are flying back to Alabama, if there's cigarette smoke and it bothers you, say nothing and just open the windows if it bothers you.' ”

During the flight to Alabama, Harris was chatting with Renschler when the German executive asked if he could smoke. “I told him, 'Of course you can. No one will care,' ” Harris said. “Now, what do you think would have happened if I said 'no'?”

Camp also was on the jet and recalled there had been some bad spring floods that year along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

“As the pilot flew over Nebraska and some of the other states we knew they (Mercedes) were looking at, he might have stayed over some of the flooded areas a little longer than normal so everyone could get a good look,” Camp recalled.

The Alabamians talked up the state's advantages and never spoke ill of their competitors, Camp said. But the views of the floods in other states below didn't hurt Alabama's case, he said.

In the running

As the Mercedes team became more interested in Alabama, more people were brought into the state's team.

“From late May into September, the (TCIDA) staff got into working seven-day weeks. We were coming in early in the morning and leaving late in the evening, and it was all about Mercedes,” Longgrear said. “... A lot of it was new to me then, but we made sure we met all their deadlines for information.”

Privately, some of the recruiters wondered where Alabama stood.

“I finally asked one of the people we were dealing with, 'How would we know if we are making progress?' He said, 'You will know when you stop hearing from us.' ”

That never happened.

Meanwhile, options to buy the land in the proposed site were obtained and incentive legislation passed in Montgomery.

In the final month leading up to the announcement, the competition among the final states intensified. Folsom said he sent Camp to Stuttgart, Germany, where Mercedes is headquartered, to keep track of developments and quickly counter the offers coming from the other states.

Then about a week before Mercedes planned to announce its decision, The Washington Post reported Mercedes had picked North Carolina.

The report caused a media frenzy. Sewell, who was designated as the sole Mercedes spokesperson regarding the site search, said she got repeated calls at 2 and 3 a.m. from reporters at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times wanting her to confirm or deny the report — something she refused to do. The Alabama press was less aggressive, she said, and seemed surprised that Alabama was still being considered.

Meanwhile, at the Tutwiler Hotel in downtown Birmingham, Topazi and the team of state negotiators were hammering out the final agreement to bring the plant to Tuscaloosa County.

One participant said Topazi asked a Mercedes negotiator if the report was true. The negotiator said it was false and suggested they finish the agreement that was made public a few days later.

“Without question, we knew the Tuscaloosa County site was a superior site,” Folsom said. “It really fit what the company (Mercedes-Benz) was looking for.”

In the weeks before the announcement, the thinking across the nation was that the Mercedes plant would go to one of four states — North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Georgia, Folsom said.

Expensive incentives

“What was different for us is we did not have an auto plant, whereas the others did,” Folsom said. “I think we were hungrier and worked harder, and I think the (Mercedes) search team and Andreas Renschler saw that, and they trusted us more. They had more faith that we would deliver on what we promised in our incentives package.”

In the end, Alabama’s incentive package totaled $253 million and was “very similar to what was offered by the other finalists,” Folsom said.

The money came from the state, Tuscaloosa County, area cities and businesses. Much of it paid for preparing the site for construction, improving roads serving the site, extending sewer and water lines and other infrastructure improvements. There also were tax abatements on the improvements Mercedes would make in building on the then-vacant land, and the nearly 1,000 acres of land was sold to Mercedes for $100. That increased the incentive offer.

Those incentives were widely criticized. Some accused Alabama of buying itself an auto plant. The incentives even became an issue in the 1996 governor’s race, which Folsom lost to Republican Fob James.

But Folsom, who now works in investment banking in Birmingham, said last week that he never regretted what the state did and considers recruiting Mercedes to be the hallmark of his governorship because of what it meant to the state’s economy.

“During that time you could not invest too much to make that happen,” he said. “I felt it would be a positive breakthrough opportunity for the state and would attract other industry to the state. ... It made a great statement of what Alabama and its people could do and showed Alabama to be a great place to locate and do business.”

The day leading up to the Sept. 30, 1993, announcement saw some state newspapers reporting Tuscaloosa was the choice. But Mercedes remained mum, advising the national media covering the story to report to the Detroit airport where a chartered jet would fly to the chosen city. The reporters did not know the destination until the plane landed in Tuscaloosa shortly before the announcement, Sewell said.

On a sunny, balmy Thursday morning, crowds filled Bryant Conference Center for the announcement that marked the birth of Alabama’s automotive industry.

<p>It was an economic bombshell heard across America.</p><p>In January 1993, the automotive world focused on the Detroit Auto Show, one of the auto world's premiere events where car makers unveil their newest models and latest technologies.</p><p>But it wasn't that year's expected top-selling vehicles that captured the spotlight. It was a news conference by Mercedes-Benz.</p><p>The German luxury automaker announced it would build its first auto plant in America and would conduct a nationwide search for a site where it would make an initial investment of $300 million to $350 million. </p><p>The announcement got everyone's attention — the year's biggest economic development project was up for grabs.</p><p>“Initially we screened proposals from almost all 50 states,” said Linda (Paulmeno) Sewell, who in 1993 was the director of communications for Mercedes' site selection team.</p><p>Working with site selection consulting company Fluor Daniels, the team winnowed down the list to 20 states, then 12 and finally six. </p><p>“I still remember the final six we were looking at — Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Nebraska,” said Sewell, now vice president of external affairs for Energen Corp. in Birmingham.</p><p>Mercedes' announcement of plans to build a U.S. plant came just months after its German luxury-car rival, BMW, announced plans to build its first American auto plant in Spartanburg, S.C.</p><p>BMW's announcement, however, was different. It picked the site for its plant and then announced its decision, said Dara Longgrear, executive director of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority, which recruits new industry. There was no advance fanfare, no advance notice, he said. </p><p>Mercedes, on the other hand, got everyone's attention by offering the year's biggest economic development project as the prize.</p><h3>Unlikely contender</h3>
<p>Nationally, there were some early front-runners for the site. Alabama was not among them.</p><p>In fact, Alabama seemed an unlikely candidate at the start of 1993 because the state was in turmoil. Republican Gov. Guy Hunt was under indictment for converting some of his inaugural funds to personal use. In April, a jury found him guilty, and he was removed from office.</p><p>Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr., a Democrat, became governor and quickly installed his own Cabinet. </p><p>“I asked Billy Joe (Camp) to become director of the Alabama Development Office,” Folsom recalled last week. Camp, a longtime aide and confidant of former Gov. George Wallace, resigned from his elective post as secretary of state to join Folsom's team.</p><p>Camp, who is now semi-retired but still does some economic development consulting, said last week that by the time he joined the Folsom administration, Mercedes already had set up an office in Chicago for its site selection team and had hired the company Fluor Daniels to handle the initial site selection screening.</p><p>Shortly after taking office, Folsom invited Elmer Harris, then president of Alabama Power Co. and a major voice for recruiting new industry to the state, to meet with him and Camp in Montgomery.</p><p>“When I got there, the first thing the governor said to me was, 'Do you think we should go after the Mercedes-Benz project?' ” Harris recalled. “I said: 'Yes, but the first thing you have to realize is that we are not even on their potential site list. To get on it, we have to organize and be able to make decisions on the spot.' ”</p><p>There wasn't enough time to call the governor for every little decision, Harris said.</p><p> Folsom agreed and delegated Camp to be the state's point man, who would keep him advised of developments.</p><p>“It really was quite an exciting time,” Folsom recalled.</p><p>Alabama now needed to get Mercedes' attention quickly. </p><p>One thing it had going for it was that it had made a pitch a few years earlier to get the new Saturn auto plant that ultimately went to Spring Hill, Tenn. The state had shown the Saturn team a site between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa along Interstate 20/59 near Vance. That nearly 1,000-acre site's plan had to be updated for Mercedes. A small group of Tuscaloosa County leadership was brought into the project.</p><p>“It was clear the consultant from Fluor Daniels would help find the site,” recalled Longgrear, the long-time executive director of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Authority. That's the person he had to reach, he said.</p><h3>Championship season</h3>
<p>Two things were known about the consultant, Bill Dorsey — he was going to be attending a business-development convention in Atlanta, where Alabama industrial recruiters planned to host some events, and he liked college football. </p><p>Tuscaloosa County had a trump card — UA football coach Gene Stallings' Crimson Tide was the reigning national champion college football team.</p><p>“We asked Coach Stallings to be our guest at the Atlanta convention,” Longgrear said. “The goal was to have him lure Bill Dorsey to our (hospitality) suite.”</p><p>Dorsey came to meet Stallings and the state's industrial recruiters got to meet him.</p><p>Camp recalled that the word on the street then was Mercedes already had settled on a site in North Carolina. </p><p>“I remembered I asked Dorsey if it was a done deal for North Carolina,” Camp said. “Dorsey said, 'North Carolina is a good place to do business, but it is not a done deal. If Alabama is interested, we would like to receive your proposal.' ”</p><p>That got the ball rolling. Information was supplied to Dorsey and the Mercedes site selection team; each request for more information about such things as taxes, roads, infrastructure and education systems was quickly answered as more people were added to the state's recruiting effort to make sure deadlines for getting the information was met.</p><p>Harris meanwhile asked Anthony Topazi, then head of Alabama Power's Western Division based in Tuscaloosa and chairman of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority, to work full-time on Project Rosewood, a code name for the Mercedes project, which got its name from the rosewood paneling used in the interiors of Mercedes cars. </p><p>“I told Anthony if he got Mercedes, he would have a good, long future with the company,” Harris recalled.</p><p>Topazi later became president and CEO of Mississippi Power, a sister company of Alabama Power, and later retired as chief operating officer of Southern Company, the parent company of the two utilities.</p><h3>Visiting Alabama</h3>
<p>During the recruiting process, the Alabama recruiters learned the Mercedes site selection team might be able to view the Vance site.</p><p>Harris arranged for Alabama Power's corporate jet to fly to Nebraska to pick up Andreas Renschler, who was heading the search team.</p><p>“We have a corporate policy of no smoking on our planes,” recalled the now retired Harris. “But I know a little bit about the German culture, and I knew many Germans like to smoke.”</p><p>He said he called the jet's pilots aside, told them to buy some ashtrays and put them in the cabin. “I then told them, 'When we are flying back to Alabama, if there's cigarette smoke and it bothers you, say nothing and just open the windows if it bothers you.' ”</p><p>During the flight to Alabama, Harris was chatting with Renschler when the German executive asked if he could smoke. “I told him, 'Of course you can. No one will care,' ” Harris said. “Now, what do you think would have happened if I said 'no'?”</p><p>Camp also was on the jet and recalled there had been some bad spring floods that year along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.</p><p>“As the pilot flew over Nebraska and some of the other states we knew they (Mercedes) were looking at, he might have stayed over some of the flooded areas a little longer than normal so everyone could get a good look,” Camp recalled.</p><p>The Alabamians talked up the state's advantages and never spoke ill of their competitors, Camp said. But the views of the floods in other states below didn't hurt Alabama's case, he said.</p><h3>In the running</h3>
<p>As the Mercedes team became more interested in Alabama, more people were brought into the state's team.</p><p>“From late May into September, the (TCIDA) staff got into working seven-day weeks. We were coming in early in the morning and leaving late in the evening, and it was all about Mercedes,” Longgrear said. “... A lot of it was new to me then, but we made sure we met all their deadlines for information.”</p><p>Privately, some of the recruiters wondered where Alabama stood.</p><p>“I finally asked one of the people we were dealing with, 'How would we know if we are making progress?' He said, 'You will know when you stop hearing from us.' ”</p><p>That never happened.</p><p>Meanwhile, options to buy the land in the proposed site were obtained and incentive legislation passed in Montgomery.</p><p>In the final month leading up to the announcement, the competition among the final states intensified. Folsom said he sent Camp to Stuttgart, Germany, where Mercedes is headquartered, to keep track of developments and quickly counter the offers coming from the other states.</p><p>Then about a week before Mercedes planned to announce its decision, The Washington Post reported Mercedes had picked North Carolina.</p><p>The report caused a media frenzy. Sewell, who was designated as the sole Mercedes spokesperson regarding the site search, said she got repeated calls at 2 and 3 a.m. from reporters at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times wanting her to confirm or deny the report — something she refused to do. The Alabama press was less aggressive, she said, and seemed surprised that Alabama was still being considered.</p><p>Meanwhile, at the Tutwiler Hotel in downtown Birmingham, Topazi and the team of state negotiators were hammering out the final agreement to bring the plant to Tuscaloosa County.</p><p>One participant said Topazi asked a Mercedes negotiator if the report was true. The negotiator said it was false and suggested they finish the agreement that was made public a few days later. </p><p>“Without question, we knew the Tuscaloosa County site was a superior site,” Folsom said. “It really fit what the company (Mercedes-Benz) was looking for.”</p><p>In the weeks before the announcement, the thinking across the nation was that the Mercedes plant would go to one of four states — North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Georgia, Folsom said.</p><h3>Expensive incentives</h3>
<p>“What was different for us is we did not have an auto plant, whereas the others did,” Folsom said. “I think we were hungrier and worked harder, and I think the (Mercedes) search team and Andreas Renschler saw that, and they trusted us more. They had more faith that we would deliver on what we promised in our incentives package.”</p><p>In the end, Alabama's incentive package totaled $253 million and was “very similar to what was offered by the other finalists,” Folsom said.</p><p>The money came from the state, Tuscaloosa County, area cities and businesses. Much of it paid for preparing the site for construction, improving roads serving the site, extending sewer and water lines and other infrastructure improvements. There also were tax abatements on the improvements Mercedes would make in building on the then-vacant land, and the nearly 1,000 acres of land was sold to Mercedes for $100. That increased the incentive offer.</p><p>Those incentives were widely criticized. Some accused Alabama of buying itself an auto plant. The incentives even became an issue in the 1996 governor's race, which Folsom lost to Republican Fob James.</p><p>But Folsom, who now works in investment banking in Birmingham, said last week that he never regretted what the state did and considers recruiting Mercedes to be the hallmark of his governorship because of what it meant to the state's economy.</p><p>“During that time you could not invest too much to make that happen,” he said. “I felt it would be a positive breakthrough opportunity for the state and would attract other industry to the state. ... It made a great statement of what Alabama and its people could do and showed Alabama to be a great place to locate and do business.”</p><p>The day leading up to the Sept. 30, 1993, announcement saw some state newspapers reporting Tuscaloosa was the choice. But Mercedes remained mum, advising the national media covering the story to report to the Detroit airport where a chartered jet would fly to the chosen city. The reporters did not know the destination until the plane landed in Tuscaloosa shortly before the announcement, Sewell said.</p><p>On a sunny, balmy Thursday morning, crowds filled Bryant Conference Center for the announcement that marked the birth of Alabama's automotive industry.</p><p>Reach Patrick Rupinski at patrick.rupinski@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0213.</p>